PARKEN STADIUM

'Parken Stadium' (English: ''the Park'') is a football stadium in the Indre Østerbro (''Inner Østerbro'') district of Copenhagen, Denmark, built from 1990-1992. It currently has a capacity of 42,305 for football games, and is the home ground of F.C. Copenhagen and also the Danish national football team.
In the future, the so-called "Coca-Cola stands" will be demolished and replaced by new ones. This will raise the capacity to 42,765 seats. During the construction phase only about 35,000 spectators will be able to see the national team play their 2008 Euro qualifiers. On 11 November 2006 chairman of Parken Sport & Entertainment, Flemming Østergaard, told about the good dialog with Copenhagen Municipality about the construction permit, and the possibility about building a multiarena at Parken^[3]. On 27 June 2007 it was announced that the new arena and stand will be ready in 2009, together with a new wall function in the stadium, to split the stadium in to halves, while the roof is over. The wall will be filled with air, which makes it soundproof. This will be used for handball, tennis and other sports.

Contents

History

Notable matches

Concert venue

See also

Notes

External links

History

Parken Stadium field

Parken is built on the site of former Denmark national stadium, Idrætsparken, from 1990 to 1992. The last national team match in Idrætsparken was a 0-2 Euro 1992 qualification loss to Yugoslavia on November 14 1990, and on September 9 1992 Parken was opened with a 1-2 defeat in a friendly game against Germany.
The stadium was rebuilt by investors Baltica Finans A/S in turn of the guarantee from the Danish Football Association, that all national matches would be played at Parken for 15 years. The re-construction, tore down and re-built three of the original four stands, cost 640 million Danish kroner.
In 1998, Baltica Finans sold the stadium to F.C. Copenhagen for 138 million DKK, and the club now owns both the stadium and the adjacent office buildings in the company of Parken Sport & Entertainment.
Parken was included in UEFA's list of in the fall of 1993, making Parken eligible for hosting the finals of the UEFA Cup as well as the now defunct Cup Winners' Cup. Being a 4-star stadium, Parken can not apply for the biggest European club game, the UEFA Champions League final, as that demands 50,000 seats.
On June 2 2007, Parken was the venue for the 2008 UEFA qualifier fan attack.

Notable matches

Date	Team #1	Res.	Team #2	Competition	Spectators
1994-05-04	Arsenal	1-0	Parma	Cup Winners' Cup 1993-94 final	33,765
2000-05-17	Galatasaray	0-0 (p4-1)	Arsenal	UEFA Cup 1999-00 final	38,919
2005-10-08	Denmark	1-0	Greece	2006 FIFA World Cup Qual. group 2	42,099 (stadium record)
2006-04-06	F.C. Copenhagen	1-0	Lillestrøm	Royal League 2005-06 final	13,617
2006-04-30	F.C. Copenhagen	0-0	Brøndby	Danish Superliga 2005-06	41,201 (league record)
2007-06-02	Denmark	(a)	Sweden	UEFA Euro Qual. group F	42,083

Concert venue

Main articles: List of concerts at Parken Stadium

Parken is also used as a concert venue, and hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2001. As a direct consequence of this, and to make Parken a more useful venue in general, a retractable roof was applied to the existing structure.
Musicians like Depeche Mode, Celine Dion, U2, George Michael, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd, Metallica and Michael Jackson have performed at Parken. Eminem was scheduled to perform at Parken in 2005, but he cancelled his Europe-tour. Robbie Williams has performed there several times, in 2006 he was the first artist to perform two concerts in a row at Parken. The biggest concert ever held in Parken was a performance by Justin Timberlake June 23, 2007 with 55,000 tickets sold.
Once every year the TV network TV 2 Zulu organize a big concert, Zulu Rocks, and in 2006 The Black Eyed Peas, Pet Shop Boys, Kashmir, Pharrell and Mew performed.

See also

★ Speedway Grand Prix of Denmark

Notes

1. Københavnsk multiarena i 2009
2. Historie
3. Arena- og tribunebyggeri i og ved PARKEN]

External links

★ Official website

★ Tourist info from copenhagen.com

★ Listing on stadiumguide.com

★ WorldStadiums.com entry